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RE: Examples of good English.
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Examples of good English. (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
Anais Nin used the word 'sex' to describe as actual sexual organs, in the Delta of Venus stories.
Anais Nin and Henry Miller were literary companions and lovers. When I was young I devoured Henry Miller. At the time, he seemed to me to be the epitome of the avant garde writer and thinker. And at the time i think he was. Two things stand out in my mind about Henry Miller. The first is his book "The Colossus of Maroussi," in which he spent much of 1939 traveling and living in Greece, at the invitation of his friend Lawrence Durrell, who lived in Corfu. The "Colossus" in the title refers to their mutual traveling companion George Katsimbalis, a Greek who reminded me of Zorba the Greek.
The second thing that stands out is when I read "Tropic of Cancer." I recall a very funny incident when Miller moves to Paris. He meets a whore and stays with her in her Paris apartment. Miller is new to Europe and Paris, and he goes to the toilet in the whore's apartment. He has to defecate, and unknowingly defecates in her bidet. Of course, Miller, not knowing what a bidet is, thinks its a toilet. The whore returns to her apartment, sees what miller has done, and immediately kicks him out of her apartment. A very funny episode, as Miller describes it.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jun. 3 2013 1:23:56
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Examples of good English. (in reply to BarkellWH)
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I liked Miller's account of how he handled insurance salesmen. After quitting his job at the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company (Western Union, where he was a manager) he stayed home and started writing full time.
A plague of insurance salesmen was visited upon him. For some reason he would invite them in, but he couldn't get rid of them.
At last he hit upon a solution. His writing desk faced a wall. Behind his writing chair he arranged 12 straight chairs in a semicircle. When an insurance salesman arrived, he would invite him in, seat him in one of the straight chairs, and assure him that his 12 disciples would arrive soon, for his daily lecture on the new religion.
No insurance salesman stayed longer than 5 minutes.
I am still puzzled why he invited them in at all. If I answer the doorbell and don't recognize the person, and there is no Postal Sevice, FedEx or UPS truck at the curb, I simply say, "No thanks," and shut the door before they can say anything. I never answer my landline phone. If it's important, they will leave a message.
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 3 2013 2:52:22
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Examples of good English. (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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Borges was a polymath whose interests encompassed everything from mathematics to esoteric pursuits such as the study of the Kabbala, and he incorporated his vast store of knowledge in his stories. His story "The Aleph" is a perfect example. The theme of "The Aleph," like that of several of his stories, is the infinite. While mathematics is one aspect, Borges casts a much wider net than just mathematics in entitling his work "The Aleph." He describes The Aleph in the story as being a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping or confusion. Borges writes of the Aleph: "Universal space was contained inside it, with no diminution in size. Each thing was infinite things because I could clearly see it from every point in the cosmos."
Borges then incorporates in the story two observations regarding the Aleph: one regarding the nature of the Aleph; the other with respect to its name. Borges begins with the latter, noting that "aleph" is the first letter of the alphabet of the "sacred language" (Borges is referring to Hebrew). He notes that in the Kabbala the letter "aleph" signifies the "En Soph," the "pure and unlimited godhead." Regarding its nature, Borges states the aleph "is the symbol of the transfinite numbers, in which the whole is not greater than any of its parts."
Ever the scholar of esoteric knowledge, Borges finishes "The Aleph" with some historical observations that lend credence to various observations of the infinite. Among others, he recounts the story that in 1867 Richard F. Burton was the British Consul in Santos Brazil. (Note: this is true, Sir Richard Burton was one of the great explorers, linguists, and polymaths of the nineteenth century who did most of his work in the East, but was at the time noted the British Consul in Santos.) Borges continues: "In July of 1942, Pedro Henriquez Urena discovered a manuscript by Burton in a library in Santos, and in this manuscript Burton discussed the mirror attributed in the East to Iskandar dhu-al-Qarnayn (the Arabic name for Alexander the Great). In this glass, Burton said, the entire universe was reflected."
As I commented in an earlier post, Borges' stories incorporate themes involving the infinite, appearance vs. reality, labyrinths, infinite libraries and books, the doppelganger, mirrors, and occasionally gauchos and knifefighters thrown in for added interest. Borges may have been Argentine, but he belongs to the world, wherever there are readers who appreciate interesting tales told with great erudition.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 3 2013 18:56:05
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